Blood Lake (20 page)

Too bad my tourist visa is missing.

“Look,” I begin, “I just came down here for a few weeks to visit my family.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“Why do they keep hassling you?” I ask.

“Because they can.”

“We have a lot in common,
señor
Zimmerman.”

“So far I only have your word on that.”

“Well, that's the first thing: we're both extremely cautious.”

“And why is that?”

“Because the man who baptized me was found murdered three nights ago.”

He slowly lowers the menu and regards me with his world-weary eyes.

“Your paper was the only one that reported it,” I say.

“The priest? The one who—?”

“The one who used to mediate between the army and the rebels. Yes. His kind are an endangered species.”

“You knew him?”

“Knew him? I'd be a pile of bones in a shallow grave if it weren't for him.”

Suddenly he's very interested in my life story. I give him the two-minute version, then it's his turn. He tells me all about the shit he's seen as an investigative reporter in a place where the rivers overflow with shit.

His first book was an exposé of the genocidal atrocities committed by the Argentine military during its dirty wars, and his second book is a memoir of his long years of suffering in an Argentine military jail after the first book came out. Don't look for either of these at your local bookseller's. Now he's researching a third book that he's going to call
The Bloody Trail
, a catalogue of evidence that a series of assassinations of prominent Latin Americans was actually a single “operation.” His list includes labor organizers, environmentalists, congressmen, an archbishop, and three presidents, including Rolando Aguilera of Ecuador.

“Aguilera's plane smashed into a mountain,” I say.

“His plane crashed in the mountains,” he says. “But—”

A crustaceous old man shuffles over to us. I order a
café con leche
. Mr. Zimmerman wants his as black as it comes, the coffee equivalent of a neutron star, if possible.

He continues cautiously: “They won't let me examine the evidence.”

“What evidence? They cleaned up the wreck the next day, just like they did in La Chala.”

Hmm.

“Then we have the same problem,” he says. “Governments are all the same. They think that if nobody stirs the pot, the lumps will sink to the bottom quicker, out of sight.”

“They might be right. I think somebody's trying to do that with the murder of Padre Campos. What do you know about that?”

“No more than you,” he says.

“Yeah, people keep telling me that, but someone at your paper knows more than I do.”

“If you mean the boys on the police beat, then I think it would be rather dangerous to pursue.”

“But why—?”

“May I join you?” says a voice behind me. My tailbone gets a thousand-watt jolt, but I manage to stay in my seat and not soil the cushions. Zimmerman barely blinks. A flak-jacketed man smiles down at us, dirty-blond stringy hair down to his collarbone. Time to gather my frizzy hair with an elastic band so it doesn't look quite so much like Elsa Lanchester's fright wig in
The Bride of Frankenstein
. This humidity really microwaves my hair and accentuates its hybridity, the curly-dominant genes mowing down the straight ones like an iron scythe raking through a forest of raw spaghetti.

“Hello,
señor
Connery,” says Zimmerman. “You may speak to the
señorita
in English. She's a
paisano
of yours.”

“Yeah? You're from the States?” says Connery in honest-to-God American English as he sits down next to me.

I shove over. “Yeah. New York fuckin' City. How about you?”

“Portland fuckin' Oregon, babe.”

“But you're originally from Chicago.”

“Wha—Is it that obvious?”

“Chicago's a great town,” I say. “Lot of Ecuadorians there.”

He laughs self-consciously and brushes the hair out of his eyes. Bit of a kid for a man in his midthirties. Not very worldly for a Latin American correspondent. He says he's trying to make the leap from covering Little League games to front-line news.

“Then why are you here? Everyone knows the big stories are in Colombia and Peru,” I say.

“Gotta start somewhere,” he smiles, big and sincere. “My name's Peter. What's yours?”

“Filomena Buscarsela.”

Unrecognized Command.

Does Not Compute.

The waiter ambles over to our table and plants himself there as though he's just moved as far as he intends to move in this geological epoch. I remind him that we ordered two coffees. Peter asks what there is to eat. The waiter makes a halfhearted gesture in the direction of a hand-painted placard.

“
Cuero de chancho
. That sounds good,” says Peter.

I caution him: “You really want pig skin simmered in rendered fat? Ecuadorians love it, but most Americans think it's like eating a fried football.”

“I'll take it,” says Peter.

“It's your life,” I tell him.

Meanwhile the waiter is engaged in a slowness contest with the lamppost, and the lamppost is losing.

Ruben checks his watch and says, “I have to get back to the paper. Care to come with me?”

“There's some stuff I've got to do first,” I say. “Later?”

He checks his watch again. “Sorry, I've got a deadline. Every minute counts.”

I smile.

“Did I say something peculiar?” he asks.

“No, it's just that Ecuador was never a place where every minute counted. It's going to take some getting used to.”

“A responsible journalist delivers up-to-the-minute information,
señorita
Buscarsela,” Ruben replies, tapping his watch for emphasis.

“Fine. Is tomorrow good?”

“Sure, come by around eleven. I'll be on the third floor going blind in front of a computer screen.”

“I thought I warned you not to visit those porn sites,” Peter jokes.

Ruben shakes hands with us and shuffles out of the café.

“Been down here long?” I ask, looking around for the waiter, and still waiting for my coffee.

“Only a couple weeks. You a reporter too?”

“No.” I answer his obvious follow-up: “Just visiting family.”

“Ruben Zimmerman's part of your family?”

“Sure. We go way back.” Back to Adam and Eve's cousin Rosita, maybe.

No waiter yet, but a barefoot boy comes around to our table holding a sheaf of tattered lottery tickets clipped to a square piece of cardboard.

“Buy a ticket,” says the boy.

“I don't play the lottery,” I tell him. I gamble enough with my life as it is.

“Bu-u-u-y-y-y a ti-i-i-icket,” pleads the kid in a practiced but transparent whine.

“No.”

“Bu-u-u-y-y-y a ti-i-i-icket.”

“I said no.”

“Bu-u-u-y-y-y a ti-i-i-icket.”

“Okay, I'll buy a ticket,” says Peter, rewarding the little brat for his persistence. “How much?”

“
Ocho mil
,” says the kid. Peter starts reaching for his money.

“The hell it is,” I say, grabbing the kid's clipboard. I take a close look at the tickets. “They're supposed to cost thirty-five hundred sucres each.”

“I heard the
señor
, he asked for two tickets.”

“That still leaves you overcharging by a thousand sucres,” I say.

“The
señor
is a North American. He has money.”

“All right, gimme two tickets,” says Peter. “What's a thousand sucres, Ms.—?”

“Filomena.” It used to be enough to raise an army.

“Filomena. I won't forget that again. Here, kid. Keep the change.”

“He will,” I say.

“Lighten up. What's two bits between rich Americans?”

“I just don't think you should be letting him make it dishonestly.”

“Nice sentiment. But you know, one time in India I saw this barefoot girl who got like eighty cents for every thousand bricks she carried.”

“This isn't India.”

“I know. I mean, put yourself in his shoes—”

“I
was
in his shoes, Mr. Connery. I went barefoot until I finished fourth grade, but I
finished
fourth grade, and high school and college, too, without short-changing people. I may be a rich American to him, but I wasn't always that way, and I didn't get there by cheating people. I've been working since I was that little snotnose's age, and it hasn't made things any easier.”

The waiter crawls over with the small black coffee that Ruben ordered before he left, his gaze drifting upward as if the alien vessel that he has been expecting is two hours late already and he is getting impatient.

Ecuadorians are among the most patient people on earth. They have to be. They've been waiting for a decent government since 1533.

“Carlos, my man. How's that autopsy going?”

“Bad news, F. We can't find the body.”

“What do you mean, you can't find it?”

“I mean it's not there. It might've been transferred to the provincial morgue.”

“Might have been?”

“Man, stop repeating everything I say. Sounds like the phone's broken.”

“It's just that—” I stop myself from saying too much. “Okay. See what you can find out. And if you come up short, you can make it up to me.”

“How?”

I give him Donut Boy's description and a promise of reward if he brings back anything useful for me.

I dodge the sun in a sliver of shadow, trying to fool my skin into thinking it's cooler, and wait for the bus that'll take me to the city center.

Yes, I take a bus. In fact, I take
two
buses. Hey: The odds are only 1 in 5 that we'll be assaulted.

Now I've got to trek all the way across the city to La Chala
again
and try to get a few things straight in my mind that the humidity just keeps on curling. And I sure hope it's not a big freaking waste of time like my last visit.

The police reportedly discovered Padre Samuel's body at around 12:30
A.M.
, but I've got two separate accounts suggesting the time of death may have been closer to 11:30
P.M.
You can dump a lot of evidence in an hour, if you know how. And a lot of people in this town know how.

I try to cut through all the obvious crap first. There's nothing to convince me of the suggestion that the Padre was gay, because I'd have known about it before now. It's not as if the issue of sex never came up. That selfless, peace-loving man admitted to the scope of his sexual feelings when we discussed the vow of chastity as one of my principal reasons for not joining the sisterhood, so I think we can scratch the deranged-rent-boy-with-a-knife theory.

On the other hand, some of those Chala whores are pretty quick with a straight razor. It could have been a woman. God knows the Padre was human. But he had plenty of chances to be with women that he did not take. Poor women, grateful that he had helped them, who had nothing to offer in return but their womanhood. He probably knew them all by their first names.

But even a swan's shadow is dark. And enough money will buy you a person's soul in a place that desperate.

What about Canino's victory Mass? What would lead my old friend and savior to do such a thing? Of course, so far I've only got Pancho La Pulga's word on that, which is a pretty flimsy foundation for any theorizing. Yeah, he played me like a mixing board, all right. My astonishment couldn't have been more obvious if flashing lights and sirens had
come popping out of my head wailing
weee-oooo-eeeeee-ooooeeeeeeeeee
… How pathetic.

We pass the sweeping, epic monument to Alfaro with the vibrant sickle-shaped waves of humanity pushing him forward. He is not isolated on a rearing steed, sword waving emptily towards the luxury hotels across the square; this leader is being propelled skyward by the unstoppable force of the people. Yeah, it's propagandistic, but aren't they all?

We are all links in the chain of action. One lone nut didn't make Samuel Campos disappear from the face of the earth. Someone gave the orders. Someone engineered the blackout. Someone had two political opponents and a rebellious priest killed, with the threat of more to come, and someone sure as hell mopped up afterwards. Why are they killing people? To “destabilize” the economy? Hell, the economy is so unstable already a good breeze would knock it over. No—this is a specific plan to get rid of these major opposition figures
now
, because the ruling party and their secret armies want a lock on their power in the upcoming election, or maybe they are just figuring, Hey, now's our chance, in the middle of all this other mess. Who's gonna notice? And where the hell is Ismaél?